To Dance with Death
by EstelRaca
Summary: What he wants is to forget for a brief period of time who and what he is. What he needs is something else, and what he gets... Mind melding with a human is a very different experience.
1. Spock

**Disclaimer:** I love these characters and have for all my life. They are not mine, sadly.

_To Dance with Death_

Nyota Uhura is beautiful.

Spock had known from their first meeting that her physical body was considered attractive, though he hadn't understood the lure that attraction was expected to be. Her symmetry of feature and form, her grace in movement and gesture, were elegant things. They were to be admired, as all well-made things of nature were to be admired. The attention many of the male and some of the female cadets had shown her; the conciliatory, lust-filled comments of a handful of the younger instructors bemoaning her status as a cadet, he had been able to comprehend neither, showing him yet again how different he was.

He had not understood the human definition of beauty. Had a feeling that perhaps most humans didn't understand the human definition of beauty, for though she was worthy of the praise and respect that evidently went with the description, it had nothing to do with the physical attributes the humans almost always cited.

Her mind is warm, open, welcoming, questing yet never probing. It is not an acceptable use of the Vulcan mind meld, what he is doing, but the same recklessness that allowed him to turn his back on the Academy years ago allows him to keep his hand on her face. She leans into his touch, into the meld, strong and yet so gentle, trying desperately to discern what he needs.

He needs this. He shouldn't need this, shouldn't _allow_ himself to need this. There are ten thousand Vulcans suffering the same loss. Surely none of them are being so selfish and cavalier. Surely none would risk the sanity of another sentient creature for their own gratification. Surely none of them even need worry about risking the sanity of another, their own firmly intact...

The self-recrimination has no time to build, stripped away by a fiery will that becomes a fiery sun. He recognizes Earth's bright star and blue sky, though the landscape is unfamiliar, perhaps entirely unreal.

As unreal as the beautiful woman dancing on a crystal lake.

As unreal as the voice that fills the world, surrounds the world, creates the world, powerful and true.

Silver flashes at the woman's wrists and ankles, water glistens at it flies from beneath her feet to strike the vibrant grass surrounding them, and always the voice continues to sing. He knows only a handful of words in Swahili, but he is one with the dancer, is one with this world that she loves, and so he understands what she is singing. The dark husky tones of the hunter; the soft answering tones of the parent and the lover; the light tinkling voice of the child. She knows all the ancient parts, can caress them all here, own them all, and she offers them freely to him.

Offers them gently to him.

He does not guide the meld, letting her essence and mind flow through his, over his, surrendering his identity to the goddess singing the world into being. The landscape twists around them, the singer's language changing, and for a brief moment it is no longer water that leaps from beneath her feet but stars. The universe is wide and cold, but it holds no fear for her. Then that second is gone, and their surroundings shift again, and again, and again, her feet touching upon a dozen planets. And if they are rote pictures she dances within, the most famous images from the most famous worlds, the singer gives them true life. Each language is stroked, cherished, caressed in its own vowels and syllables while still being bent into the rhythm of the song.

He watches, and listens, and for a brief period of time he is able to forget who he is and what he is. The universe is made of song, and the song is made of a dozen languages and thrice as many dialects, but it fits together. It flows. There is no competition. There is no contradiction.

There is only song, and dance, and being.

He is so lost in the essence of the simple pleasure of existence that he doesn't recognize the new language quickly enough to guide the meld away. He does not want this. He does not want to see her dance in a place that she will never stand upon. That no living thing will set foot upon again.

He is in too deeply, though, his being merged too firmly into hers, and he has surrendered control. He cannot stop the images from flowing around them. Dark feet slipping lightly across the balcony where his mother frequently stood; dark hands caressing his mother's face gently, and Amanda smiles at the woman. The dialect the singer speaks in is his own, the Vulcan with which his father taught him and the children ostracized him.

A single step and she is standing within the black bubble that constrained his early schooling, caressing the walls, singing to the computer in lilting tones. He follows, helpless, afraid of where they will go next, afraid that they will see—

The desert, and sand flies from under the dancer's feet, scratches at her eyes as the singer's voice slows. Pain drips from that voice, oozes through the world as it cracks and groans. The heaving of the planet does nothing to halt the dancer, her feet landing where they will, upon solid ground or absent air. Her movements have changed. Still graceful, but this is a grace of grief, of terrible loss. These are movements that will not be denied, a eulogy for a planet, a song for despair and destruction.

She does not try to deny them, though. She offers her body to the dance, reaches to her limits and beyond, trying to encompass in her frail human mortality the enormity of what happens around them. For the first time he feels strain in her muscles, pain from the exertion that would be. Should be. Could be, if this were real.

This is not real. This is fantasy, fiction, illusion of fact, his mind giving her illogical humanity something to play with. A dreaming. He should end it, should pull them back from this brink of insanity. He should—

The sight of the older woman halts his thoughts, freezes his poor attempts at regaining control of the forces he has set free. Of course she is here, in this place, as the planet keens around them. Of course she extends a hand to the human he heartlessly brought to this place, a smile upon her face.

They whirl together, dark and light, old and young. He never had the opportunity to see his mother dance, and surely if she had it would not have been in the hectic madness of leaps and bends and turns that this dance has become.

The unseen singer is no longer alone. Two voices trace the lines of the song, Vulcan words set to Terran music... and Vulcan music... and so much more. The universe is formed of a medley of grieving, vast and diverse, but somehow the end result is still beauty rather than gaudiness.

This should not be. It is illogical. It is dangerous. It is possibly madness.

Yet he is drawn to it, driven to it. He does not know what he means to say, what words he plans to use to silent the haunting, grieving vastness they are drowning in. Spoken words are futile in this world, at this point, and so instead he simply adds his voice to the song. The other voices part for him, slide up in octaves, build upon his simple designs.

Two hands reach for him, draw him to the dance, and he realizes that he has physical form.

There is no thought in the dance. There is no thought in the song. There is no _room_ for thought, no room for logic. There is only room for grief and loss and the desperate mortal calling of those things to the vastness of the universe. The world trembles and dies around them, collapsing in upon itself, and they dance upon the ashes of a planet, upon the atoms of wishes and hopes and potential futures, until there is only darkness.

His voice goes quiet, drops from the music that defines the world. The void beckons, empty, simple, close. His mother's voice halts as well, her feet slowing as her hand settles into his. He cannot look at her, cannot look away from the emptiness that has consumed everything.

Her hand strokes down his face, tender and familiar, pulls his head around so that he is looking into her eyes. "You have much life left, my son."

There is no bitterness in the depths of her gaze, no anger, no terror. Only the same love and strength and devotion that always shone from her eyes. Right up until the moment he let her fall. Right up until the void opened within his katra as swiftly as the black hole did within his planet.

"Grieve, Spock. Grieve, and live, and remember." Her hand strokes his face as arms wrap around him from behind.

The dance has ended. The dancer trembles against him, pressed full-length against his back, sobbing and shaking with a grief that is beyond containing. The world-song has slowed, the words becoming quieter, shifting first into English and then back into Swahili.

His mother's hands cup his face, her smile bright even as her eyes fill with tears. "You will _always_ have a mother who loves you."

The words are not right, not the words from memory, but they somehow fill a small part of the void in his being.

The dream is ending, the meld slowly breaking apart as the singer's voice softens, softens, slurs, and he can no longer understand the words, though the emotion in them is clear. The void recedes, the dancer guiding him again among stars, but he knows where the darkness is, where it will always be.

The dancer's hand slips from his, her mind retreating into the safety of her own being. He should do the same, plans to do the same. Instead he finds himself looking back once more at the darkness of nothing.

Only the void is not empty. Framed by stars, his mother dances with Surak. Her face is lit by joy and laughter; his countenance is the strict emotionless mien with which he defined their species.

The meld snaps apart, a sharper severing than there should have been, and for a moment he is disoriented in his own body. His fingers tingle, the tips numb, and it takes him longer than it should to realize that his hand is no longer pressed against Uhura's face. Instead their bodies are molded together, her arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly against her. Shivers traverse the length of her form, mimicking themselves in his. Or perhaps he is shivering, and it is her form that mimics.

It doesn't matter for the moment. The deep meld that should not have happened is broken, but subtle conduits remain open, a crack in the door between minds.

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. They aren't ready yet for words. Maybe he will never be ready for words. So many human words for emotions he is not supposed to feel, is not supposed to act on.

Emotions that shine from her. His grief, his loss, his agony, poured out in tears upon his own shoulder.

He cannot cry. Sarek taught him too well to be Vulcan for tears to come to his eyes.

But he can embrace her as she cries for him, for a mother and a planet and a people that she will never get to meet.

Holding her gently but firmly, he knows she will feel at least a faint echo of the gratitude he does not know how to voice.

Hopefully, it will be enough.


	2. Uhura

**Disclaimer:** I love these characters and have for all my life. They are not mine, sadly.

_To Dance with Death_

Spock is bleeding.

It's a slow flow, a steady loss of invisible blood. Most of the people around them can't see it—don't want to see it, can train their mind's eye away from the hideous wound. So long as he is able to function, is able to pace steadily, stoically from one of the bridge to the other, there is no need to acknowledge what is happening.

She sees it, though. She can't _not_ see it and she hurts for him, hurts as she hasn't done in a very long time. As a child her mother called her _empath_ when she shared other's pain, berating, scared of what her little girl would grow up to be. A strong woman, a good woman didn't cry so easily, for sorrows that were not hers.

So she doesn't cry for him. She wants to, how she wants to, to give sound and form and meaning to that terrible pain and horrific, ceaseless loss of being. He's hemorrhaging out all that he is, all the humanity and sardonic wit that drew her to him, and he won't let her stop it. He rebuffs her attempts to staunch the bleeding.

It wasn't the right way to go about it. She knows that now, knew it then, that he couldn't reach out to her as any other human would. He couldn't melt into her arms, couldn't open his heart and cry. Starfleet officers didn't do that. Vulcans didn't do that.

Instead they bled on the bridge, left trails of blood so hot that most people couldn't perceive them.

It's why she can't hate Kirk, despite the fact that she wants to. He's cocky and arrogant and he treats women the way her mother always warned her soldiers did. But he saw the blood. He saw the pain. His bandage may have been woven of violence and his heart driven by revenge, but he did _something_. He reached Spock when she couldn't.

But Jim Kirk isn't here. He's not the one who was approached with a whisper, an awkward entreaty, a terrified suggestion.

Spock is ready to heal. He's asking her for help, and though she's afraid too, her thoughts hectically scattered, she can't let him know it. He'll turn away, countenance that Vulcan effigy of silent acceptance, and he'll keep bleeding.

She's not a child anymore. She's seen what real empaths can do, and she knows she isn't one. She can't heal with a touch, can't take away the pain with a kiss, though she would if she could. Would do anything, be anything if it could bring back the man she had known as a teacher and friend. All she can be is Uhura, though, the frightened, headstrong human.

Hopefully it will be enough.

His quarters are dark, the lights at less than one-quarter power. He doesn't meet her gaze as he leads her to sit on the edge of the bed, taking up a perch in front of her. He opens his mouth, starts to explain again how dangerous this is and how she doesn't need to acquiesce so readily to his illogical suggestion. Shaking her head, she places a single finger over his lips.

If this is what he needs, this is what he'll get.

His fingers tremble as they reach for her face, and she fights the urge to shake as well. He won't hurt her. Of that she is certain.

But there will be pain. Of that she is also certain, though everything else about the meld is a beautifully dark mystery.

His fingertips are soft, tender, spiderweb silk against her skin. She knows that isn't right, knows there are calluses on his hands just as there are on hers, but there is no time to dwell on that. Caging fear and banishing caution, she leans into the touch.

And feels the world dissolve around them. Sensation vanishes, leaving only thought… and him.

He is beautiful. An equilibrium of forces, yin and yang, human and alien. She had never understood what it meant to be Vulcan before. It isn't pointed ears and green blood. It isn't even logic, though that is a part of it. It is a way of thought, a way of feeling that is completely new to her. She wants to explore it. She wants to dive into that alien consciousness, hold it, feel it, experience it as her own.

That isn't what she's here for, though. She's here to help him, here to offer solace to a friend, and she can feel how badly he needs it. Self-recriminations race through their mind as the meld deepens and strengthens, and she gasps in sorrow and denial. He has done nothing to deserve reproach, and she will not stand for it.

Her mind is his mind, her fierce rejection of the doubts burning them away. It is heady, exhilarating, control such as she has never known before. It is also terrifying. What is she to do, in this world that is empty save for them? With pure thought as her only weapon, how is she supposed to help him?

The answer is there as soon as the question is formed, a knowledge of what he wants. He wants her. He wants to cease being for a short time, to drown his thoughts in the essence of her being. He wants her to lead.

She can do that. She can give herself. And she can give them form.

The darkness yields to the fiery passion of Sol, the vastness of the African plain. Her home, hot and full of life, and he welcomes the heat just as she does. There are many places in Africa she could have taken him—mountains capped in snow, lakes thick with fish, villages filled with a people strong and brave. This is the one she loves most, though. This is the one that is hers. Traveling on foot with her father, learning the animals and plants and petty old dangers of their world; soaring above it with her mother, seeing the vastness of the world stretch away, the slowly moving black masses that were the herds.

Song comes unbidden to her, spills from her mind before she can contain it. She does not _want_ to contain it. The songs are as much a part of this world as the landscape, and she loves them, caresses them, dances to them. They are old, these dances, far older than her, but she owns them. The hunter, her mother, stalking foreign dignitaries, wile and wit and sharp courage proving to them that Africa is a force to be reckoned with. The lover, her father, a touchstone for them both, switching between the mantles of teacher and comrade and political sounding board with gracious ease. The child, herself and so many others, learning to live with their heritage, to love it. Pride and sorrow and so much change for them to try to comprehend, but the old dances can be adapted, because the old roles have not changed on a fundamental level. They are simply more open.

There is a man bleeding on the edge of the water she dances upon. Red drips from a hideous wound in his chest, but he is unaware of it. His eyes are fixed upon her, his being surrendered to her, and he loves this place as she loves it but he does not belong here.

Neither of them belong here. This place shaped her, created her, as she creates it now, but it could never contain her. It is her mother's place, purchased with struggle and sweat and a terrible, implacable will. It is her father's place, tended with love and compassion and deep surety. But it is not her place.

Her place is among the stars. Her place is among the planets, twisting into the songs and the words and the myriad people that she will some day meet. He follows her there, passive, yearning to be empty, to fill himself with her, but she will not allow that. They are one, and she will give him everything she is, play it out upon a stage as vast as imagination, but she will not replace him. She will not fill the hole in his being that trickles green blood onto the mountains of Malur, red blood into the waters of Sikaris.

There is nothing left in the universe that can fill that hole.

But they are not in the universe, and Vulcan is not dead in this place. The words come easily to her, slip into the rhythms of the song, and she cannot say if it is her will or his that guides them. The places they walk through are his, as is the woman who walks beside them now, silent, serene, and achingly beautiful.

Amanda Grayson is dead. Uhura knows that, and yet a thrill goes through her as the woman smiles at her, welcomes her to the world that created Spock.

A home, combining the austerity of Vulcan logic, the tradition of Vulcan beliefs, and more than a touch of the human.

A black bubble, a computer speaking quickly, flashing information more quickly, and yet she can process both inputs at once. She can respond to it, tease it, invite the computer with a lilt in the song to dance with them.

A desert, and she almost screams, the agony is so great. He died here, died and yet continued to live, and he does not want to see it again but can't find a way to pull them away.

Shouldn't find a way to pull them away. This is the wound. This is the injury that is slowly destroying him, the horror that he can't name, can't face, can't understand.

And she can't understand it, either. Though she feels it she can't state what it is to lose a planet, to lose a people, to watch Mother die, having brought her so near safety wrapped protectively in her arms. The Vulcan high council there to save, the culture of their people, and she puts her arms around the human.

Logic says there is no personal God, but surely what transpires here is punishment for poor choices, past and future.

Her muscles ache, her chest burns, but she throws herself into the song and into the dance. He does not know how to mourn for this tragedy, but her people do. The scale was smaller, but they have lost everything in the past, to the folly of others as well as to their own.

Many peoples have paid dearly for the simple sin of existence, and mourning is a song known throughout the universe. She gathers the threads to herself, gathers the song and the words and the rhythms, and she gives them to him. He is not alone. He is not wrong.

Amanda is there, and though she knows it is only an image, only an imagining, she loves the human woman who holds out a hand to her and joins her in the dance. How can she not love her? Spock loves her dearly, holds her clearly in his mind, the focal point around which the inconceivable loss of a planet's population can spin.

He is still passive, still a watcher, and that is not what needs to be. It is his grief they channel. She will not be callous enough to steal it from him. Extending her hand is a fluid part of the dance, as is Amanda's offer, and she does not know which of them gives the woman that power.

Has a feeling that perhaps neither of them have.

She cannot think after that, cannot wonder or reason or even cry. A planet _dies_ before her, a thousand cities torn to bits, and she cannot do them justice. She cannot encompass all they were, all they could have been, but she can try, and at least Spock is with her now.

Yin and yang, the golden mean, Human and Vulcan, he dances with them. Steps away from her, and it is red blood that stains his chest, human eyes that well with sorrow; steps toward her, and it is a Vulcan she holds, blood green, ears pointed. But there is a deeper divide, a deeper mean even to that, and she comes to see it as he dances.

A twist of his wrist, a toss of his head, and the Vulcan is not emotionless. He is fury, he is rage, he is helpless despair as he witnesses what happens.

A shift of his foot, a howl in the words of his song, and he is logic, he is acceptance, he is nerveless functionality.

Balance, a creature of balance, and it is heartbreaking to see him here, to see him struggle to regain that balance as the darkness swallows the light around them. Tears flow down her face as the tragedy comes to a close, the music slowing. There is nothing left to dance for.

Spock is still, a bitter stillness of uncomprehending acceptance as he stares at the emptiness around them. Welcomes it, a surcease from pain, and her tears flow harder as she comes up behind him, wraps her arms around him. She will not lose him to this.

Amanda is there, comforting him, loving him, and perhaps this is what ghosts are made of, for again she cannot tell if one or both or neither of them guide the being that wears his mother's face.

"You will _always_ have a mother who loves you."

The words are soft, are gentle, are dual, and she knows if she moves from Spock to look behind her she will see her own mother standing there. Not proud, as Starfleet wasn't the dream she had long held for her baby girl, but accepting. Standing straight and tall, a smile on her face, willing to hug her daughter and wish her well even if she doesn't understand why she acted as she did.

Was it human nature, to need that reassurance in the face of the unknown and the frightening? Or was it merely the nature of the child, to need someone who loved them even when they failed? Either way, the simple statement strengthens the flow of tears her mother had always warned her against.

It is time for them to leave. She can feel her thoughts getting sluggish, her body and mind beginning to buckle under the unaccustomed stress. Taking Spock's hand, she leads them back the way they came, stepping slowly and quietly among stars. They will still explore them someday, test her skills with language, test his skills at command, but it will not be as it could have been. Should have been.

The meld cracks, fractures, breaks, and she is in her own body again. They are not sitting as they had been but rather lying full-length on the bed.

It is a human impulse that causes her to wrap her arms around him while his breathing is still shallow, his mind still coming back. She cannot hold all that she saw, all that she experienced, all that she was and he is in her human mind. The memories are fading already, blurring around the edges. His mind is alien, though it is beautiful, and she cannot follow all the thought patterns that burned between them in that world.

But she can remember a dance, and a planet dying, and a mother's love that will not fade.

She can remember a man bleeding, red and green, calm and furious, lost between balancing worlds.

He cannot cry. She understands that now. The outburst on the bridge, the fury and hate on his face as he gleefully, consciously strangled another sentient creature, it was as much Vulcan as human. It is a precarious balance he strikes, human against Vulcan, logic against empty emotion, and he does not know how to loose one emotion without loosing others. He cannot cry without wanting to hurt. He cannot mourn without wanting revenge.

She can.

She is not an empath. She cannot take his pain. It is not hers to take, though it is his to share. She can only be human, as he cannot be. She cries against his shoulder, shakes with sobs that are ripped from deep within her being. Allows his grief to have voice, fierce and aching and desperate.

When finally she lies still his arms are wrapped around her, cradling her gently. And though she isn't sure how she knows, she's quite certain that finally, after far too many days, Spock isn't bleeding anymore.


End file.
